what is radioactive waste? is it well defined, orderly and safe? or is it a little bit of a mess? or...

Waste Not, Want Not

Future of Radioactive Waste and Nuclear Safety in Gloucestershire

John LargeLarge & AssociatesConsulting Engineers

London

What is Radioactive Waste?

is it well defined, orderly

and safe?

or is it a little bit of

a mess?

or one hell of a mess?

Let’s define Radioactive Waste or

RadWaste

we’ll keep it simple

• Radioactive Half-Life

Longevity

• Environmental Impact & Human Uptake

Chemistry

• Heat Generation, Tissue & Organ Damage

Energy

Iodine-131 8.0 daysCaesium -134 2.6 yearsCaesium -137 30 yearsPlutonium-23924,100 years


Longevity

• Human Uptake – Biological Half-Life

Chemistry


EnergyIodine (thyroid) 80 daysCaesium (muscle tissue) 110 daysPlutonium (bone marrow)+200 years


Longevity

• Environmental Impact & Human Uptake

Chemistry


Energy

α (alpha) β (beta) γ (gamma) η (irradiation)

Energy

Longevity

Chem

istry

take some

rubbish – let’s call

it RADWAS

TEput it in a

BOX

to CONTAIN

its propertie

s

Energy

Longevity

Chem

istry

So, put the RadWaste in a plastic bag

then the CHEMISTRY is contained

Now we have to deal with

the RADIATION

Pop the bag into a canister to shield the RADIATION

ENERGY

keep the container wholesome so long as the radiation persists

at a harmful level

So, if this was a drum of Cs-137

waste then it has to contain and shield the waste for, say,

10 half-lives or

(10x30=)

300 years

10 half-lives or

(10x30=)

300 years

300 years

But, there’s a

BUT

So, if this was a drum of Cs-137

waste then it has to contain and shield the waste for, say,

These radwaste

drums were sea dumped

off Jersey in the

1970s and are now breaking

up

creating NEW

EXPOSURE pathways

Now let’s look at the

national UK

radioactive waste strategy

The NDA is responsible

for managing all of the

LEGACY waste from past and

committed future nuclear

operations

The government

agency responsible is

the

NUCLEAR DECOMMISSIO

NING AUTHORITY

NDA

Fuel Reprocessing

NPP Operation

Fuel Fabrication

Nuclear Energy R&D

Medical etcDefence

Total Waste Legacy Volume 4.7 million m3

Fuel Reprocessing

NPP Operation

Fuel Fabrication

Nuclear Energy R&D

Medical etcDefence


Reprocessing is disproportionate because the UK

retains the ILW-LLW wastes from overseas fuel imported for

reprocessing at Sellafield

instead we send back a much

smaller volume of substitute

HLW on a curie-for-curie basis

Nuclear Power

Other Ac-tivities


97.5% OF LEGACY RADWASTE FROM NUCLEAR POWER

How Come?

Because HMG sea dumped the rest !

HLW, 1330m3

ILW, 488,000m3

LLW, 4,550,000m3

The National LEGACY RadWaste is categorised

High Level HLWIntermediate Level ILWLow Level LLW

HLW, 1330m3

ILW, 488,000m3

LLW, 4,550,000m3

greater (radio)activity than LLW but not sufficiently heat emitting to require

cooling – ion exchange resins, graphite, steel, etc

HLW intensely radioactive and heat-emitting

– spent fuel and fission product reprocessing liquors

ILW

LLW less than 4GBq/t α or 12GBq/t βγ

VLLW Each 0.1m3 less than 400kBq/t βγ

which, in terms of waste management and long-term

disposal doesn’t make much sense

and separately

Deal with the LLW in various ways – incineration, reclassification, shallow dump, etc

The NDA RadWaste Strategy is to

Interim Store and then Deep Geological Dispose of HLW and ILW (+37,200m3 LLW)

HIGH LEVEL WASTE streams from both

Spent Fuel and Vitrified Fission

Products

Let’s clear the decks for the disposal of

the ILW plus 37,200 m3 of Pu

contaminated LLW

Some of the 353,000 ILW and 37,200 m3

LLW is already packaged but a large amount is still in the defunct reactor cores

Some of the 353,000 ILW and 37,200 m3

LLW is already packaged but a large amount is still in the defunct reactor cores

UK LEGACY WASTESLet’s clear the decks for the disposal of

the ILW plus 37,200 m3 of Pu

contaminated LLW

UK LEGACY + NEW NUCLEAR BUILD

Each new plant will yield 900 HLW

canisters and about 3,650m3 ops/decom ILW over a projected 60 year operating life

Now let’s add for the NEW NUCLEAR BUILD

programme of 8 Generation III NPPs

I can calculate a rough and ready

cost of both LEGACY and New

Nuclear Build components

I’ll use HMG data


Waste Stream

Legacy New Build

Unit Cost (max) Legacy Cost New Build Cost

total

HLW 10,657 7,200 £754,700(£1,093,800)

£8.04b(£11.65b)

£5.43b £13.47b

ILW 390,000 28,480 £31,800 (£50,900)

£12.40b(£19.95b)

0.91b £13.31b

LLW 4.55million Operator range of methods £9.35b(£13.09b)

Operator

£29.79b(£44.69b)

£6.34b £36.13 (£51.03)

These are unit costs – per

HLW canister and 1 m3 ILW

(**) are the contingencies –disposal

cost for a single HLW canisters exceeds £1m

Both Final and Contingency totals exclude plutonium

contaminated wastes and depleted uranium

tailings


£44.69 billion is the contingency cost of getting

the LEGACY

RADWASTEdown a hole in the ground – NDA’s other

costs, decommissioning and clean up, render the total cost over £100b

like the game of roulette – bit of a

chance

DGR site selection is a gamble - WE

make the gamble but

YOU lot in the future may

lose!

Oh, I almost forgot – the NDA is still trying to find a site for

the Deep Geological Repository

According to NDA, best thing to do with this is THROW IT

DOWN A HOLE in the ground !

@$**!~#!

Thanks NDA !

So, what’s the chance that it will be thrown down a

HOLE in YOUR BACKYARD !

at least

600m depth

Hard or Soft Basement Geology

Good Road, Rail and Ship/Barge Infrastructure

Established Nuclear Licensed Site

Sound familiar?

Total waste volume in its

eventual packaged form – most of which

will not take place until final dismantling in

100 to 150 years

Most of this is the graphite cores and steelwork of the

two reactors – this is to stay in situ until the reactor cores

and pressure vessels are dismantled in 100 to 150

years time

BERKELEY

Waste Stream

Raw Waste m3

Partly Treated m3

No of Packages

Packaged Volume m3

ILW 1,600 5,290 1,060 6,910

LLW 298 23,400 1,540 30,300

1,900 29,700 2,600 37,200

OLDBURY

Waste Stream

Raw Waste m3

Partly Treated m3

No of Packages

Packaged Volume m3

ILW 578 4,740 651 6,120

LLW 23.3 27,100 1,660 32,900

601 31,800 2,290 39,100

Waste yet to be recovered from

power plant and separate Lab – some of

this will be Magnox fuel splitterings located in

vaults

Includes the power plant and

Berkeley Laboratories

Oldbury similar to Berkeley but larger graphite cores and less

irradiated steelwork

Storage and Disposal of

graphite poses many problems

very long C14 half-lifestored Wigner Energylowering reaction tempfission product content

1,500 t each reactor core

Magnesium Alloy

MAGNOXIf this Magnox spent fuel rod

had been taken out the reactor a few days ago, its

radiation dose rate would be

about

1,000Sv/hr

the fuel remains radioactive for a long time – it’s still deadly after 100,000 and 1

million years

So, is a hole in the ground approach a

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Hmmmmm - If it’s good

enough for him, will it be good enough for me

when I’m in charge?

It’ll see me out so it’s

good enough for me !

But we’ve a bit

further to go yet !

We’re now 3.5 million years

after youLet’s go for a walk into the future

Where are you now?

We’re about 10 thousand years after

you

That’s about 200

generations of your

offspring

and now?

To pass the Sustainability

Test

Our solution today must be acceptable

10,000 to 1 million or more years into the

future

First, the HLW spent

fuel and vitrified

waste are the by far

major sources of long-term

radioactivity

Dissolve in the mouth

lots of Yummy

different tastes

Just like a bag of sweets

Some last long time

others fizzle away quickly

Here’s the complicated

bitThe health impact of each of those sweeties varies

with its chemistry, radioactivity, half-life, human organ,

etcto arrive at the

overall radiological impact over time

we adopt a universal RADIO TOXICITY INDEX

Here are a few fission products

of the spent fuel

Here are a few more – about 100 different

radionuclides have to be taken

into account

Add all of these

individual nuclides up to get the

SPENT FUEL total

the inventory for the

Vitrified HLW is similar but

lower because some ILW has been separated in reprocessing

the vitrified HLW continues to decay in the repository so

at some point in time it reaches the

equivalent radiation level as the original

uranium fuel

THIS IS WHERE THE

10,000 YEARS COMES FROM

THIS IS WHERE THE

10,000 YEARS COMES FROM

not really – the 10,000 years derives from an old sales pitch of the

nuclear industry

Look at it this way: If the

same criterion is applied to

the Spent Fuel

The equivalent period is about

3.5 million years

this is because

reprocessing strips out the

long-lived plutonium and

depleted uranium from

the wastetogether with some very

long-lived ILW streams

So WASTEWISE no gain because .

.

LOW LEVEL WASTE & DISCHARGES

LLW excluded from comparison but much larger for

reprocessing, particularly now that marine discharges have

been throttled back

FUEL REPROCESSING

waste comprises about 1/3 volume HLW, x30 lifetime

and x120 reprocessing waste volume

1 fuel + 30 ops

1/3 fuel + 30 ops + 120 reprocessing

DIRECT FUEL DISPOSAL

total waste comprises includes about x30 lifetime

ILW waste volume

Obviously, it not possible to

‘engineer’ a man-made containment for 10,000 to 3.5

million years so the repository depends

on natural MULTIPLE

GEOLOGICAL BARRIERS

Let’s step through

each of the multiple barriers

the main barriers

are:

FUEL CLADDING AND SOLUBILITY

After 3 to 4 years in

the reactor

the generation of gaseous

fission products crack the ceramic

fuel pellets

cracks and pebbling provide

paths for FP to

migrate out of the

fueland

increase dissolution rate of the

fuel

The fuel itself is not as

robustly contained as often

portrayed by the nuclear industry

AND . . by the time the DGR is built (2040-50) some of the fuel will be 60 yrs+

FUEL CLADDING AND SOLUBILITYcracks and pebbling provide

paths for FP to

migrate out of the

fueland increase

dissolution rate of the

fuel

Water entering the disposal canister

will dissolve the fuel and provide a rapid migration route into

the host geology

Fuel dissolution in water is the

primary release process now occurring at

Fukushima Daiichi

Once in the repository,

three sequential processes take place

the timing of these processes determines the future health detriment or

RTI

2mm

Take a case where there

is an undetected

manufacturing defect in a

canister

5mm2 BREACH

IN ELECTRONWELD

OK – let’s assume that the DESIGN target for canister failure is

10,000 years

This gives a fixed point RTI

hereThe canister

with a manufacturin

g defect releases

early at 300-400 years

Its RTI point is

here

x80So, early failure

increases the potential

health impact by x80

x80The Swedes reckon their canisters will last 400,000 years before

failure

x600

The Swedish design claims

to REDUCE the health impact by

x600

x80x600

The Swedish design claims

to REDUCE the health impact by

x600

This gives a total

UNCERTAINTY of the

radiological impact of the

DGR of 600+80 =

680

Here’s a canister

failure mode caused by

the bentonite clay itself

Clay ambient temperature at about 600m+

Fuel canister heats the surrounding

bentonite clay plug – this takes a couple of hundred years

years later, water seeps in, Bentonite swells and exerts force to canister

Canister collapses, radioactive release

to geological barrier commences

Heating drives water to outer

region of Bentonite, inner region

desiccates, shrinks and fissures

Now we know that after about

150 years we can’t get at the

fuel or HLW vitrified waste,

so we had better shield

and package it so nothing goes

wrong

Obviously any of these faults and design

shortcomings have to be discovered in the

first 150 years

Otherwise it’s too late

to implement corrective

action

This is the present public dose limit at 1mSv/annum

This is the design target for the NDA DGR – most of nuclides are held

back by the natural geological barriers

I’ve converted

the vertical axis to units of

Dose Exposure

in milliSieve

rts

Finally, let’s look at what the DGR claims to achieve

The maximum dose to any one individual of 0.0001 mSv occurs at about 1

million years in the future

This is the present UK public dose limit – it is

x10,000 higher than the maximum DGR public

dose

x10,000

so this seems OK but it’s the NDA reliance on how

much of the fuel inventory the natural

geological barriers of the DGR design holds back

Remember this slide – it’s the total radioactivity of

spent fuel that is going to be thrown down the hole

DGR).

I’ll add the claimed hold-back of the natural

geological barriers of NDA’s DGR, adjust the dose scale, and . . .

smudge out the individual spent fuel inventory

leaving just the total spent fuel inventory for this

comparison

you can see that the DRG is expected to stop

everything in its tracks for the first 10,000 years

but if a canister leaks or some other mishap occurs

at just beyond the recoverable 150 years . . .

. . could be radiologically serious . . . narrowing the safety margin TIME and

SCALE considerably

Oh, and I almost forgot, the NDA has yet to find a site suitable for

development of a DEEP GEOLOGICAL

REPOSITORY

That’s it, lots of RadWaste but

nowhere to dump it!

And absolutely finally, in this presentation we have only

considered RadWastes arising from normal, event-free,

operations of the UK nuclear industry.

How much RadWaste could be generated in an accident and how

much existing RadWaste is yet to be

found ?

EVENT YEAR RAW RADWASTE~m3

MANAGED~m3

SUBSEQUENT MANAGEMENT, ETC

Windscale – reactor fire

1957 unknown unknown Probably sea-dumped and/or discharged

Kyshtym (Mayak East Urals) – HLW explosion

1957 Unknown Unknown Contaminated 15,000 to 20,000km2

Three Mile Island – reactor melt down

1979 In excess of 400,000 gallons of contaminated water

Clean up costs excluding ongoing RadWaste management, about $1 billion

Chernobyl – reactor explosion/melt down

1986 25,000,000m3 1,500,000 m3

for Vector facility processing and packaging

Greater part abandoned at 800 mostly unsupervised dump sites in evacuation zone - contamination beyond Ukraine, ie Wales, Cumbria, Scotland etc, and Russian Federation and Belorussia not accounted for

Fukushima Daiichi – 3 reactor core melt downs

2011 About 1,000,000m3 contaminated water to date

ongoing About 8% of Japan’s land contaminated, of which 1.5% requires long term restrictions on use and habitation

London Olympics – development of Olympic Park

2012 7,800 Reburied on site

Contaminated soil, etc., of past East Ham industrial tip Sifted down to about 2,500 m3, reburied on site where it remains today

Here are some

examples:

Chernobyl25,000,000m3

Fukushima >1,000,000m3 1.5% total land area of Japan

Olympic Park 7,800m3 Undiscovered until 2010

FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI

Air Concentration – 12 to 15 March

Ground Deposition – 12 to 15 March

Inter-Tidal Dose from Marine Discharges Excluded

Total Exclusion Zone 25mSv Emergency Dose Limit

Day 6 Total Evacuation Zone

Cumulative Whole Body Dose~6 weeks 12 March - 24 April 2011

Day 18

~140,000 Fukushima evacuees

Total Exclusion Zone

In the UK 5mSv/annum triggers

a Radiation Emergency

That follows this dose contour out to

50km from the nuclear plant

But the REPPIR pre-prepared plans for Oldbury are limited

to 1 km radius

These are claimed to be Extendible out to

10 km

So the UK REPPIR off-site emergency

arrangements are totally inadequate for a

Fukushima scale accident

Let’s apply this to the

UK Emergency Planning

Arrangements

And, in terms of ground

contamination

60km

EU LimitCs-137 600Bq/kg

x230x380

x53x64

x10

x6

x230 to 380 EU Cs-137 limit

That’s an area of about 80km by 10km, so

800km2 of which the 150mm top layer is likely to be contaminated

By sifting in-situ about 5% of this has to

be removed as LLW and 1 to

2% as ILW

LLW 6M m3

ILW 1.2M m3

ORDO NOTHING

and wait another 300 or so years

2.5%

6.5%

Japan Total Land Area - % Contaminated Land

8% total

Cs heavily contami-nated requiring physi-

cal intervention

Requires at least some radiological controls

“ . will allow people

evacuated to resume their

normal lives“

Mike Weightman IAEA Fukushima Mission

then UK Nuclear Safety Chief Inspector

JUNE 2011

According to the IAEA a

NORMAL maximum

exposure is 1mSv per year

about 1 week ~ 2 weeks

~ 4 weeks ~ 8 weeks ~ 4 months

these dose rates can be

converted to the maximum number of weeks of

exposure for this area out to 3km from the plant

and, again, do the conversion for a much wider area from the plant

< 8 hours

< 2 days

< 4 days

< 2 weeks

< 20 weeks

Projected dose levels in the Tokyo conurbation caused

considerable concern

30 months later

20km+ zone still evacuated – agriculture and use

controls extended further afield

¥20 Trillion - $260 Billion

+ $60 B Fukushima Daiichi

30 to 50% added Unit Generating Cost

It happened here

WELL COULD IT?but it couldn’t happen there

. . . Well, err . . .Quite Possibly. . . err . . .. . . um . . .. . . Ah, well . . .

Illustrated Presentation available at

http://www.largeassociates.com

what is radioactive waste? is it well defined, orderly and safe? or is it a little bit of a mess? or...

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